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OpEd: Asian Americans fit to belong-the Atlanta shooting

Photos courtesy of the Chinese American Museum

by Ed Shew

Every group that has immigrated to America has struggled to “fit in” while battling the hatred and discrimination from those already established. First there was the “Yellow Peril” and later xenophobic myths that promoted the false ideas that Asians were disease carriers, a threat to the nation and could never truly become American.

Now history repeats itself with the continuing mantra of former-President Donald Trump, other political leaders and some media outlets, calling Covid-19 the “Chinese Virus” and the “kung-flu”—thus stoking anti-Asian hysteria, racist attacks and now the Atlanta murders. Since the pandemic, there are 3,800 reported “hate” attacks against Asians in the United States, ranging from violent attacks and verbal abuses to the vandalizing of Asian-owned businesses. Hate crimes in 16 cities rose by 150 percent in 2020 against Asian Americans (many of them elderly women). They are an attack against the most vulnerable of an already marginalized population.

The racism of outright hostility and/or micro aggression of thoughtless, unintentional racism confronts Asians. Our world minimizes us and at times we minimize ourselves.  For example, I’ve often been asked. “Don’t you think you’ve been helped by being Chinese?”  After spat at a couple times during the Vietnam War, denied employment and housing and stopped seven times for traffic violations in my life—and not once been given a warning, always given a ticket, well, I hide my scornful smile. Sweeping generalizations of Asian Americans as the “privileged” and “successful” spit in the face of inequalities that many Asian Americans face daily.

While laudatory in tone, the “Model Minority” is not a compliment, and it does nothing but render discrimination against Asian Americans as invisible. The generalized argument, that the success of Asian Americans in the United States is a tribute to hard work, strong families and passion for education, is misleading, if not false. “When the 1965 immigration ban was lifted, only select professional Asians were granted visas to the United States: doctors, engineers and mechanics. This screening process, by the way, is how the whole model minority quackery began: the U.S. government allowed only the most educated and highly-trained Asians in and then took credit for all their success. See anyone can live the American Dream! they’d say about a doctor who already came to this country as a doctor,” Cathy Park Hong writes in Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning. 

In addition, this myth perpetuates that racism, including more than two centuries of Black enslavement, can be overcome by hard work and strong family values.

In fact, the model minority label operates as a racial wedge that divides Asian Americans from communities of color while maintaining white dominance in leadership and politics.

A meaningful consequence of the model minority label is its failure to acknowledge socioeconomic and education disparities within and among the diverse range of communities categorized as Asian American. Not all ethnic communities under the Asian American shield are advantaged. Southeast Asian Americans (Hmong, Laos and Cambodia) drop out of high school at an alarming rate. These Asian American subgroups, along with Vietnamese Americans, earn below the national average.

To further highlight, while Chinese immigrants had higher median household incomes compared to the overall foreign-born population and native-born households, at the same time, Chinese immigrants were slightly more likely to live in families with annual incomes below the official poverty threshold (17 percent) compared to immigrants overall (15 percent) or the U.S. born (13 percent), according to the Immigration Policy Institute in January 2020.

Once I viewed the wrongs committed against Chinese as not being comparable to those committed against Black people in America. I was suffering from a “second-class oppression.” To rank historical struggles by one’s race serves no purpose, but respect is an absolute requirement. It is this same conditioned minimization that sets off the narrative “our/your experience isn’t valid because we/you didn’t have it as bad.” But comparing who had it worse doesn’t further anti-racism. 

While I’m a person of color, it’s hard discussing racism against Asians in America when race is essentially a Black-white issue, and I’m not white, as I’m regularly reminded of this. For example, I do not know of one Asian who is not wounded when asked, “Where are you from? Where are you really from? Your English is so good.” The questioners “Do not get it.” We are not the “perpetual foreigner.”

Worse is when finally mustering the courage to speak up, sometimes we are met with the dismissive, “Well that’s not racism” or “What’s so bad about that?” or “Try being a woman.“  If we are not confronting, we are enabling. We Asians can do better, and we Americans must practice anti-racism and work toward more diversity and inclusion, individually and collectively. We need to vocalize, document, organize, uproot and address any form of prejudice or bigotry that prevails in any community. Let’s involve all groups in the discussion. We can’t call ourselves anti-racists until we acknowledge all marginalized people, including Asian Americans.  Furthermore, we cannot let the media and the politicians abandon this crisis of “Asian hate.”

Furthermore, Asian Americans are the fastest-growing segment of eligible voters out of the major racial and ethnic groups in the United States. More than 11 million were able to vote in 2020, making up nearly 5% of the nation’s eligible voters (for this analysis, U.S. citizens ages 18 and older). 

I acknowledge America was never perfect, but that is no excuse for the present racism from the killing of unarmed Black citizens, to the continued genocide of Native Americans. However, my hope is that America will strive for something better.

Brene Brown, Ph.D. says, “Fitting in is being somewhere you really want to be, but they don’t care one way or the other. Belonging is being somewhere where you want to be, and they want you.”

Native St. Louisan Ed Shew is a Chinese American and a retired human resources professional and the author of the historical novel, “Chinese Brothers, American Sons.” 636-614-6717 or [email protected] 

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1 COMMENT

  1. good report, but pray tell, where is the cover of your book? –Nona Mock Wyman—author / haiku-yun…

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